BALL x PIT

Hey everybody. Nate here. Just a Quick little editor's note before we get into the episode. So this episode was actually recorded a couple months ago. While we were still kind of figuring out what our new format was and everyone's schedule was all over the place. So we didn't actually release it when we recorded it, but we thought now would be a great time to drop it into the feed.

Um, because, well, we didn't want to waste an episode, but also uh Ball Pit very recently just announced a or released a free DLC which added a bunch of stuff to the game. Uh, which is really cool. We love it when a game does that. Um, but because this was recorded a couple months ago, we don't talk about that at all. And also because

Uh, we were still figuring out our format. Things were a little unclear at the end of the episode. So I thought I'd remind everybody that this show is listener supported. on Patreon and now patrons, if you subscribe at any level, get access. To our new bonus show. So we're doing main feed episodes like this every other week. And on the uh in between weeks, we are releasing episodes on our private Patreon feed. These are things where we're going into

our old making me happy segment or talking about other games that we're playing, just sort of a looser conversation about things that interest us. We're still kind of trying to come up with a name for it too. So if you have any ideas, let us know. So anyway Hopefully you enjoyed the episode. Hopefully you've enjoyed Ball Pit. And uh yeah, thanks again, everybody. You can find all of our Patreon stuff on patreon.com slash theshortgame or at shortgame.fm. Now, let you get over to the episode. Bye.

Welcome back to the short game. Show about short video games. Games that respect your time. My name is Nate Heininger, and I'm joined this week by two bouncy co-hosts. Laura Nath. And Shane Kelly And this week we are Reopening the roguelite exception on this show. I pulled these guys in to play a game that I have been absolutely obsessed with. We're playing ball pit. I don't think you're supposed to say the X. It's kinda fun to say ball X Pit, but I think it's just ball pit.

Certainly makes it easier to Google if you put the X in, otherwise you're just getting ball pits. Even if you put the X in, you're still getting ball pit hits. Yeah. People want to sell you ball pits. Uh I've noticed a lot of that uh unvoiced uh kind of dividing X in the titles of things lately. Like there's uh there's uh spy family anime and and Spy has that interstitial X So uh yeah, I I've I I think I I caught on that you're not supposed

X. I don't know where that's a good thing. Well, this game makes ample use of that X. It's kind of uh it's not just there for flavor. The the um the X is a arguably a game mechanic. uh that gets built on over and over. Um This game came out a couple months ago at this point as

pretty big in the zeitgeist. A lot of people talking about it playing it in classic short game fashion. Here we we are, you know, m even months later after that, uh, talking about it. But I'm really glad to talk about it. Um I I mentioned it on the It's one month. Is it? Yeah, it's still pretty hot. Still pretty hot. October fifteenth. We're okay. We're doing okay. We're in this like realm of respectability. Sure. Kinda. What? Maybe.

full year exceptions to our game of the year sometimes. Um I think we're cool. Um is this a short game? Uh I'm probably gonna argue no, but we'll get to that later. Either way, it's uh you can play it in short sessions. Which is uh critical. Very short set. The roguelike exception TM. Yeah.

embodied is is the uh we we've done a roguelike exception for short sessions where the short sessions ended up being closer to an hour. So this is a much more polite roguelike exception where it's more like a good run is fifteen minutes. And it can get down to uh like eleven, twelve even. So you can certainly play this game in one sitting. You are just certainly not going to get through all of it in one sitting if not

Many. Uh, but that's okay. It's uh it's a lot of fun. And as I talked about a little bit on the last Patreon episode, I played this right after Silksong. This is the first game I played after two months straight.

of nothing but silk. And I think that this is the opposite of the that game. This is like dopamine That must have been a brush a breath of fresh air for you. Uh uh a you know, Silksong is a game of dopamine starvation until the greatest hit of your entire life. Uh and then ball pit is almost no F.

uh for just uh casino game level of ding ding ding ding ding ding ding dopamine dopamine dopamine just right uh straight into my little lizard brain. Uh it's been it's been great. But um uh Well I know, Lori, you a lot of time these games that um kind of are going wild in this micro genre are some take on absolutely ancient game mechanics. Like like go back to the the very earliest, like

Brickbreaker might have been like the third game. People it's like it's like we came up with Pong and like I don't have a friend here to play Pong with. I'll play Pong against a wall. Uh and and now let's just add ten thousand different modifiers on top of that and you have ball. Yeah. Well it's and some enemies and some ca uh Community building kind of? Yeah, that's one of the strangest parts of this whole thing. Uh bizarre that they have a city builder in

Well, did did either of you get into vampire survivors at all? Have you played I we did an episode on on it when it when it was hot and I played a absolute ton of Okay. So dude, I played I think I didn't get as into it as everyone else did, but I think that was only because I was doing something very important I'm sure at the time that that kept me away. Um th it's not because Vampire Survivors didn't have its hooks into me. I think I just was saved by like life being busy.

any other Survivor game since then. Um, and then this, you know, and I know there's a bunch of other ones that are out now. It's kinda like the the trendy genre, but I mostly avoided them not out of a lack of enjoying it, of just like, I don't need that in my life, right? Uh, but something about the combo of a zombie or a uh survivor uh game with

Brickbreaker, which I've always loved, Brick Breaker games. I I can't even really name any of them other than just like old timey Brick Breaker games. I just I've always loved that simple game account. And so this one, Survivor Like Brick Breaker was like, that seems like a perfect combo. And uh I'm it and I think it is. I think it just is a perfect combo. Um Laura, you did a little bit of

Did we lose the ship? But before we do that, we should probably stop and restart the recording because we lost. Did we lose him entirely? Okay. Actually, if he just Possibly. Yes. Yeah, I mean So okay. Cause just we can keep going. I just wanted to call that. Yeah, leave and come back. Descript is pretty good at handling this. Okay.

Yeah. Great. Just leave the room and come back and then you can give me the same intro. And I'm ready for that to answer the question. I just was like, wait, let's pick Shane before we keep going. Was talking and trying not to get distracted by the chat, but I could see something was happening in the chat. So it's like Hẹn gặp lại. Well, hopefully his uh hopefully his internet maintains. I know I wasn't there for the fabled

Pet Planet or whatever what was the name of the game you guys? Oh, Prehistoric Planet. Yeah. Oh it was definitely going bad while we were recording and like part of it was like the recording was going bad but also like Ty kept being like and then the That's like, oh the child recording is hard enough. But there were also it was lag and internet issues happening on the same time. That's tough. So like stuff.

It was tough and I was like, I think there was bad internet at the time. Yeah. So I was like, this is gonna be on Yeah. Um I just accepted him coming back in. Oh, weird. He is. There we go. All right, okay. Uh sometimes it has problem with my my camera, so I'm just ditching that camera for now. Yeah. Might I might just turn my my video off and I Yeah. You can you can keep it on for us just so we can see you, but I think um Dealer's choice.

All right. Uh I don't uh remember exactly what I was saying, but I know I'm trying to key it over to you, Laura. So You were gonna key it over to me, so however you wanna transition. So Laura, I know you did a little bit of research on the the background of this game. Um did you wanna share that?

Yeah. Uh so this is by Kenny Son and Friends. Uh I like the tiniest bit worked with Kenny Son at Game Club and in that we did uh Circuit Infinity, which I believe is his first game, uh, was part of the package uh and uh Only emails, never actually been. So th I'm just ethics and gaming journalism. Well tiny. The short game can't be bought, of course, you know. We're we're uh we are ethics in in games and everything. So don't worry, we uh Oh yeah we uh um

But anyway, I think it's a good idea. We're beholden to no one. Uh Kenny's stuff rule was like always really visually crisp. Um, did a lot of things like um there was uh a threes roguelite called Twinfold he did. He had, you know, um Hollow Dorway, uh Mr. Sun's hat box just like a slapstick platformer. And so I I've kind of kept my eye on Kenny Sun, although the games have often been so small they can't like Circuit Infinity is a tidy game. It's wonderful, but it's tiny.

Um, and so I was excited after I got into Ball Pit to be like, Oh, Gandhi said this. It's how I like awesome. Like love when someone you you're rooting for does well. And the impetus of this game is that um Uh like Kenny was on the subway and saw an ad on his phone for a game called Pun Ball and played it and missed a stop, but also was like, I see all the flaws in this game and I'm gonna fix them.

Nice. went out um and said like it's gonna be ball mechanic combat and um you know didn't actually talk about brick breakers he was like I was spinning off of other people's brick breakers like I didn't go back to the OG source Um, the other thing that I thought was awesome from the article from Game Rant is that they had a description of the tone.

uh that said the game itself is very gritty and takes itself very seriously. However, the self serious tone is paired with a city called Ball Balon and some silly imagery like the player spitting out a bunch of balls. Uh community team came up with the term epic but goofy. So I just wanted to share that as my favorite quote I got when I was researching the development. But uh seems just like it Donald's used a game because person thought the mechanics were rad and I agree.

That tone really is is funny. It it has this sort of um, you know, I'm gonna commit a game review cliche by comparing something to Dark Souls. But uh in this case stylistically. Yeah, Luke Hero is is really a good touch point here too. I mean it it's i it's co it's taking that um kind of grim dark aesthetic and applying it to something that is kind of comically over the top. The um The the character portraits and the item pictures and all of that have this

Sepia tone, um bloody grim. Honestly, I think the game's kind of gross to look at a little bit. At least on my on my uh OG Steam Deck, it's not the most attractive. Uh and I don't no justify buying a better Steam Deck. I don't think it's gonna make the game look different. Well maybe uh maybe some wait till you get your hands on the the new Steam machine cube.

The new Steamer. Um yeah. Uh yeah, I don't think this game looks great, but I don't think that was it was trying to look great. And as far as a Uh you know, I've heard this genre. um referred to as a bullet heaven. Uh as far as those go, you know, what you really care about is being able to read the screen and at least interpret what sort of mess you're in and

Th though the game I think is kind of muddy, like that is fine. I once you understand what's happening, un reading the screen is is quite easy.

Um Ballora, it's funny you you mentioned the the the in the article they they said looking at a game on his phone because one of my first thoughts when I started playing this game is This kind of looks like all those fake ad games that you see on every you know, where it's like it's isometric and there's hordes of things coming at you and you got a gun and they're shooting at you know

little guys and then big guys and then little guys and they're all fake. There's not the n actually there's no game like that if you follow that rabbit hole. Um but this kind of looks like made this one. Yeah. Like this kinda looks like it. And it's actually kinda satisfying because

I think we all know those games, even though we all know they they're fake, they do kind of look fun. I think someone has made other I think there's other games that have actually finally done that, but this looks just like that. There there's a few things that have come full circle. I I remember something coming out that was like specifically a joke on the fact that there's all these Game ads that uh

don't exist and made all of those and made a big trashy game that had a million of'em. But uh I forget I forget what that one was. It was a mansion and a dinosaur and it was about a match three game with a mansion and a dinosaur and we played the demo Possibly this year. I remember that. There's a guy and a dinosaur. Um our listeners are Going to be yelling at us. Um well and uh correct.

So uh so let's get into the the game a little bit more. I mean ultimately there is there's two core games going on. One is a roguelite uh block breaker, um, where you are uh A character or more who is uh in the center of a lane and the lane is just dropping uh a a series of hordes of enemies, and you're firing a range of different

uh ball types from baby balls, which is the main like little basic shot, to uh upwards. I think it gets into like Tens dozens of unique ball types, some that uh deal damage in different ways, some that have different status effects, all the types of status effects you'd think from a like a fantasy game freezing and lightning and burn and stuff like that. Um and you're the the hordes are increasing. There's usually Two mini bosses and then an actual boss at the end of the day.

Um and for the most part, like the the moving up and down the the lanes, I think we should tell the listeners that when Nate says bosses. Enemies. These are all various uh rectangles. Like and I mean this as a compliment. Tetris piece shaped many of them. Like there's the L pieces and Or little snow. There are a few bosses that like an archer in a flower bed, just like There there are a few bosses that break that mold, but yeah, everything else you're exactly right. It's just like, oh, in this

This is the forest level, so these kind of hard to understand uh squares are that are shooting at you are green. And this is the lava level, so they are red. Um, but they're they're slowly coming at you and you are firing. countless amounts of balls. And it is it has uh like block breaker mechanics. The ball bounces off the wall, bounces off the enemy, and you're trying

to get uh you know the dream of any good block build or brick breaker is like you want to get the ball back on the back line, right? So just bouncing infinitely or getting in a little group of them so it's just You know, bouncing around and hitting'em over and over and over and killing them and their drop.

Because sometimes there are things at the front who are gonna kill you and your balls are all trapped at the back and you are just sitting and waiting and hoping. Yes. Uh more strategy than you'd think from a block buster. That's that's the word I'm using for now. Yeah, I feel like we have blockbuster, brick breaker, blockbreaker, um ball pit. All of the above. Um and depending on how you Rickle sele and I think we could talk about some of the various Um ball tied.

Um but depending on how you build do your character build, you know, will depend on are you trying to stay back and just spray as many uh uh balls at them as possible or'cause you are you can control your character and in the full space.

Are you up there even like deep in the row, like right where they're spawning? Are you bouncing back around and forth? You can move around and be agile. And you kind of have to be also because there's a ton of they're shooting things at you, different levels have different. Ground effects that make you move the entire time. And you're also in if you just hang out too close to the enemies, they'll attack you. Yeah. Uh and you're but you're incentivized to move around too because they're dropping

um experience points, which you use to level up and make your selections. And they're also dropping coins, which you then use your coins in the other element of the game, which is the Town building like pinball blockbreaker game, uh, that is the roguelite element. Um you're gonna whether you die or win in a in the level, every time you go back to your little town.

When it is at this little town that you use the resources that you gathered to play it also has an idol game element to it as well. You're you're building a little town to gather resources like wood, wheat, s and stone, and you use those yeah, you use those resources. to build buildings that provide stat improvements to your guys, to your characters, or new abilities, or things like revives or

Uh plus five percent to experience or plus five percent to get gold or whatever it may be. Like if you're played any sort of roguelite in the last five years. You're very familiar with these lines. Okay, this is going to give me a point five increase at this thing, but if I do it That starts to scale with all these other point five increases that I get and all of a sudden I'm actually quite strong now from where I began. Um but

There's a really bizarre element to this thing. I've been talking for a while. One of you guys explain the the the mechanic in which you actually acquire and build these buildings. That's the strangest thing about it to me because um

So the development of this game, I did a little cursory reading about it. You know, it started up it's been a development for a couple of years, right? And you know, if you're making something like this, uh It's published by Devolver, so I'm assuming they got a little bit of money to kind of carry it through and do a little bit more investment in developing the system so they

And what it sounded like is uh that during that time they added to it some of the they had this original prototype and then they added on this progression system and also the base building mechanic. And really the the base building mechanic is kind of a big part of the progression system, but it's a wild departure from the rest of the game.

Um you why on earth do you sit down for ball pit and decide that it needs to also have a city builder? Like I think it's they just wanted everything everything has to be Uh use the core mechanic of firing balls at stuff. I think there's like, oh, if we're gonna do a city builder, so You gotta fire balls at the city. You gotta shoot shoot balls. The balls are your little worker guides.

Sure. Yeah, exactly. So explain how to do it. So of course, while you're fighting the hordes of undead, you look down on the ground and you're gonna find a blueprint that allows you to build a And when you build that house, you get a new character that lives in the house and now you can play as that character. That's the gist of it. But then you're also collecting all these resources that you use to build the houses.

uh like a forest that you can build to collect wood and some stone to collect stone, wheat to collect food, and you're using all of this in that city building thing to build out a big pile of tiles that you then bounce your characters through to do all of the stuff. New ball bolon. Yes. You are rebuilding new ball bolon. Yeah. So you like, okay, I wanna build the uh just while the the

Know the barracks, which gives me a scaling ability to my strength. When you place it on your little map, which it's all tiles, it'll have a it'll say like zero of twenty-five bounce. And you can harvest one time per turn. So every time you come back from uh uh a a run in the ball pit, you can harvest one time and you take your little guy and you line up at your town.

You get a little directional cursor and you line up at the town and you fire and however many characters you have that aren't working in some of these buildings, they will shoot out and ricochet all through your town. And there's a bunch of different stats that determine how fast they run and how long they run and what happens when they bounce and all these things because everything has a stat block and everything can be modified.

And you have to if you want to build that barracks, you gotta bounce a guy twenty-five times off of it to build. Uh, and you can set it up to where you just fire them and they just go bing bing bing bing bing bing bing and build it really quickly, or you can build these like elaborate systems where you're perfectly arcing your guys through.

uh you know, four forests, three stones, two wheats, and also building your buildings. And it's really bizarre. And I like I love I had like a love-hate relationship with this element of the game because part of me truly respects the bizarre nature. Like I love the commitment to the bit, right? This is a this is a game where you fire balls at shit. And we're not gonna let you get out of that. Even though we're building a city builder. You gotta build you gotta fireballs at everything. Uh

Part of it I found it a little bit tedious. Late seems like it's borrowing that part to me really seems like it's borrowing from this I mean, apart from survivor like genre, you know, this sort of vampire survival new wave game. Uh, which this is heavily borrowing from. It's also pulling a little bit from idle and incremental games. Right. You know, which are huge right now, but bigger than the Survivor games. Like if you look at things that are going insanely viral from that genre, like

uh that that banana game that went insane for a while there or uh you know desktop defender was like a number one game on Steam for a while. And Uh uh so like you you comb those two kind of interlinked trends uh I think really helped boost this game, uh on top of the fact that I think Devolver carries a little bit of weight with with people. People look for what's coming out from the but this

It's a downright simple game, but it's got and it even has kind of off putting presentation. So it really is. What's really gonna draw you in is incredibly addicting gameplay and it does but you also see about thirty seconds of this in the like the full chaos mode and you're like, oh, that looks like a well that's so that's what I was gonna say is w it comes back around because I've played a lot of this game. I have almost beat Which is

well past our uh eight to twelve hour uh normal high end uh thing for for for games that we cover. Um but I've made it all almost all the way to the I've got two characters left to unlock, of which there's like sixteen, and I got one more level to unlock. Um uh of which there's I think eight or nine.

Um but Shane, I mean it l there is actually, you know, there is a full-on idle game element to this too. The the as you build out your town, you unlock more and more stuff that will on timers just harvest for you. So it you can I did it at one point. I just left the game on my Steam Deck just running because I I'm like, well I got other stuff to do, but I'll just let my my workers go and I'll collect these resources and I'll make it uh build it for me.

You know, faster. Um and I I've got this big stupid town but I figured out And I think this is certainly intentional. There's a item called a gold mine. Um or it's a it's a building called a gold mine. Build yeah, book. Yeah, and you can set up I have like two pillars of them. Going like four up and one at the top, just making a single little column and you can just fire your little guys in there. There's like bing bing bing bing bing bing ding. And it's a it's the slot machine.

Like You're just like, Yeah you know, numbers, we you know, like just stupid lizard brain video game fun that I'm like It really there is a certain addictive element to just watching the numbers go up on games like this. It's at times this is barely even like

you're you're just sitting there watching it's like surviv it's like vampire survived. You're not even doing anything half the time. I think this game does try to solve for that where some of the bosses There's some spray but a lot of the time you're just

watching your guy shoot the balls. You're making decisions on what your uh special ball types are gonna be. And we need to talk a little bit more about those because that's another whole piece of this game. Um, but a lot of it you're just watching And just running in circles, collecting gold, collecting experience, making little decisions.

hitting little loot boxes that are a random outcome that is fun no matter what, but there's better outcomes and lower outcomes. And it is just pure like Dumb lizard brain dopamine slot machine fun and uh it's it might be the perfect video game.

It might be. I I think there's one thing that I've always loved in games, that lots of games try and do this, and that's the Um, items that combine into other items. And like that's the whole deal with this. It's doing it with everything and it's doing it really darn well. Um, just having Every single time you have like, oh, my iron ball and my fireball combine to make a bomb, that's great. That's every time that happened, every time you discover a new one of those, um, delightful.

And then on top of that, you have two ways that they combine, they'll evolve and make some totally new ball, or they'll just do this ball X that ball and uh it has the a combination of the attributes of both. Both of those are cool. Which the the evolve is strange from vampire. Yeah. And the evolve I don't or the the f the fusion is what it's called. Fusion is was that makes me feel smart even though I'm not smart because I'm like, ooh.

I'll feud laser with the ba like the the one that has a million little babies, and then there will be a million lasers and I am the most brilliant person. Two things stuck together. Every two things stuck together is good. But when you get a good combo, you feel like you are a hyper genius undeservedly. I never got to a point where I was

upgraded to have more than four of the special balls at once. I'm assuming that comes like No, well you you'll never have four you never gonna there there's four special balls and there's four pass Which are what they sound like, you know, just passive upgrades. So you never upgrade past. No, but Interesting. I like that one if you keep combining. So that's what it's all about. And there's even there's some like you have to there's some later ones.

where you are combining combinations, you know, combining combinations of other combinations. So you can ultimately end up having a single slot that is the representative representation of like six different I think the the single the hardest one to do combines three different evolved balls. So it's six total balls have been evolved into this one.

So it is only four slots, but you can keep basically like you're playing threes, you know, you can keep jamming stuff into uh into those and making special balls. And that's really how you're like the game is not Hard in the way that like, you know, just coming off Silk Song is. But like you die a lot in this game, and the way you win is. maximizing those special balls and I think being kinda good. At least I kept run I ke I keep running into bad guys. That's my

Because yeah, I'm trying to zig and zag around, you know, you're trying to move around and you gotta get all the bits. Yeah, I gotta get all the bits. Um and you just kind of honestly forget that they're trying to kill you because you're you're doing other things. Um but the I I loved all like there's I I think I'm sure there are some that like I imagine people have broken this game and have figured out like this is the optimal path of

ball combination, you know, some are better than others, I'm sure. But I will say I'm again, I'm near the end of this game and I've done zero research on what is good and what is bad and I have been successful just by kind of mm, picking what sounds fun, like kind of trying to come up with my own solutions and like I have my own theories on what are like good combos that match well with other good combos, but I'm sure

I'm wrong, or at least I haven't like stumbled into the exact perfect build. Um, and I think that's good. Like, I think Yeah, I think you could just probably play this however you want and come up with your own pet strategy and it'll probably be a winning one if you just are able to execute it. Um, but some of them are are very fun. I like doing as many baby balls as possible. So the screen is just chaos and uh freeze and poison. Those are my favorite ones to go for.

I feel like I went really big on the uh like brood mom or like baby bowl, like the egg sack, the gr the gross sounding one. Because I like finding something like bleed or burn or laser and then combining it with it. So if egg sac is ever available, I'm getting it just so that I can fuse it with something great later. It may not always be great out the gate, but like I love um the chaos of every single baby ball has the power of

It's really hard to resist. So I'll take anything any power plus that feels But it's not happening all the time.

I I enjoyed uh messing around with those. I think I had similar favorite balls to you guys, but my real favorite thing was in those kind of passive bonuses when you would get stuff that would let you um have balls go through enemies. Uh that was so much fun. You would have these these runs where you were really clearing the screen from the top down. Um in fact sometimes it was

to your detriment where the balls are all bouncing around killing enemies at the top and you actually really need to target the enemies that are getting closer to the bottom of the screen where you are. Um But yeah, that that that was so um satisfying when the my favorite thing in any brick breaker type game is those moments where you break through and

pinball around up above all the tiles, breaking them from the top. And um you could uh you could kind of build for that and that's super sad. But Dolores porn o earlier it is tough when you you've you've broken through, but uh in most block breakers uh the things in the front are actively marching towards you trying to kill you. Yeah. Uh which is uh a good, you know, twist on that. Um you know.

Uh things pierce one way and they go all the way to the back and then they don't pierce down and then you're like, oh Yeah, I need that. You're just sitting there watching it. Just like look it's having a great time up there while you're just being smashed. watching things coming towards you and you're just kinda creeping in the corner. Um well there's an an And like you can catch the balls too, which is kinda neat. Like the bo the balls coming back down.

Um it's actually the best way to do it is if you can catch them because then you can fire them fast. You can shoot'em right away. Yeah. Yeah. Instead of waiting for them to hit the bottom of the screen. There's a there's a uh we've talked about the different ball types and that's

the core of what the decision making you're making in the game. But there's also uh uh we said already a but a bunch of different characters and all these other characters have a ton of different abilities and one of them, one of my favorite ones, their natural ability is every ball you shoot pierces and goes all the way and bounces off the back wall.

And so that's a that's a feature like from a passive that you can get. But this guy just starts with that. And so you right out of the beginning of the game, you're building your entire thing through. Um but that's actually one of the m one of the more normal uh character traits. Uh it's one of the first ones you get. There's another one that um instead of shooting the balls in a straight line, they just spray them.

uh which is kind of fun. It's actually I found to be a pretty powerful character because they're very fast. And they just get weirder and weirder. There is some of my favorites. There is a character that uh its special ability is that you no longer are in control of the decision making.

uh during the uh ball selection, during the level up selection, during the evolution selection, during all of that, a little white hand pops up on the screen and makes all of the selections for There is no benefit to But you as a player are rewarded through incremental advances for every character you beat a level. So if you really wanna like maximize your your game, you are incentivized to win a game, win every level with this guy that makes every choice for you. And

I don't know what the AI choice system is, like how it's making those decisions. I will say that it is making Fine decisions, but it is almost never making the one that you're like, Oh, like come on. Like this is this is the one that makes sense. Yeah, you're like Don't don't take magnet. Magnets uh magnet doesn't scale. And it shows you Magnet is like a magnet, but then like you're stuck with magnet. You leave a floor sip slots. Magnet doesn't scale.

Really reveals the di the how how different the best and worst choices are from each other, which in sometimes in these games is not that much. Um I looked on the site, I was doing my research, um, and the There's a Twitch extension. Um, and what the Twitch extension does is um you can add uh voting to allow chat to take over any of your decisions. You can toggle all of the months. So chat can handle all of the the the sessions and you can do voting duration.

And you also can set up um uh that uh chat can bless or curse you at predetermined times. It will just be like everybody spam the chat and it's a blessing or a curse and when it finishes you either get bl boons or or uh or cursed. Um but they only happen if you add a character. Like there's a character it adds and when you play it the Twitch stuff is enabled. So there's a completely level upable Twitch character that only starts it will

And I thought that was so clever. Um, that uh it's also just another character you could add. So switch twitch streamers have an extra incentive. I was like, Yes, good job. Smart everybody involved in this decision. Um I've seen a lot of people playing on Twitch. I didn't realize that I could be a part of the game and I think that's

The reeling. So like if if think it's annoying that the game is picking, imagine if your chat was picking. Yeah. I could I I'm sure it I guess it depends on what type of chat. I bet if we had the short game chat. They would they're making their so generous to us. Boons, blessings every time. Come on. And they would never

Um although there is another passive spend too long debating uh which one to pick and eventually just have to move on. There's another passive though that every time you collect a gym you fire a ball. And so you can kind of pair that with magnet, which is kind of fun. So you're just like firing it. But uh there's another character that has a giant shield and now it actually is just like a

Old school brick breaker game. You no longer gather the balls as they come back. They bounce off of you, and they actually get a bonus. when they bounce off of you. So you're incentivized. You can get up. Like I took out a boss in like ten seconds one time by firing about and getting right up in front of the bosses you know, bouncing nonstop in the half inch between me and the boss with the big shield guy. And that was very, very fun and very satisfying.

And they get weirder. There's there are a like there's ones where you have two characters that are side by side firing two at the same time. Uh all uh one where the uh Bullets are shot from the back of the screen instead of from your character, which is funny. One introduces gravity. I understand there's a couple the two that I haven't unlocked are even more bizarre, but I haven't looked them up yet. So that's something for me to

discover when I finally get to them. Um but it it's just this whole it's a whole nother element to the game. And then finally, I said at the very beginning, they make full use of the X concept in this game and that you unlock the ability to combine characters and actually enter into a a a game where you are uh you have both of your characters are both on the screen and both of their abilities are brought in.

So you can pair like I'm gonna pair the shield guy with the guy who fires a bunch of balls. And now I have both of those abilities. Um, and you know, you can see where it goes from there, but you're just constantly combining things using that X. And seeing what sort of wacky shit you can do and uh see how long you can survive. And all of this.

I'd say fifteen minute average run, you know, plus or minus a few minutes, depending on how it goes for you. Uh, and then if you're gonna really play it all the way through, you're gonna do that like a hundred times. I I mean, you get towards a mini boss fight, the lane widens, you know something's coming. The uh you know exactly when something like it's very clear when things are about to

uh need one more hit to go or need thirty hits to go or are bleeding or on fire or or lasered. Like there's so much happening on screen, but if you're looking, it's legible. Yeah. I A lot of that stuff needs you to read an intense description, right? So Uh you know it's it's very visual and clear, like I can tell when I poisoned the guy, but um the The the finer points of like the dis the difference between poison and bleed and burn, you know, like

Can you tell me without looking the difference between all of those three? Uh you know, it's uh in this game it's pr it's It's not all all all what you would think, right? Uh they they all kind of sound like oh, something that'll have damage over time on the enemies. And you're kind of right, but not really. You have to really have to read the fine print on this one. Yeah, because they are like

You you know, it could be very easy for bleed and burn to be essentially the same thing, right? Like mm-hmm, like you said, you'd think they'd just be damage over time, but no, they're they're they are fundamentally. And then there are different passives, like there are passives that impact things that are burning, which matters, you know? So it all stacks together.

Um but I I I will say I said this at the beginning. Um this isn't a criticism of the game because that's they didn't ever pretend to do this. But for the purposes of our show and our handy little tagline. I don't really think this game respects your time in the way that we talk about it. Like when I think about roguelikes that uh do respect your time, I think of the ones that

Every time I sit down, I have a chance to like win it and feel good about the run. Even if I lost, it was like it's my fault or whatever it may be. But like I'm I'm sitting down and it is like a purposeful time to play this. Uh I think there's a lot of you just gotta kind of keep playing through this game. You gotta keep doing runs, you gotta keep doing the harvest. Like it kind of feels a little of that like I'm grinding.

um to to be able to do enough of those stat increases to be able to beat some of these levels. Because I I think they've they've balanced this game in a way that like you will not be able to beat. later levels until you have done enough of this farm mechanic to have increased the base stats of your character enough. to beat them. That's ultimately how you're winning is you've just buffed your character to a point

to where you're just stronger than the level. There's certainly some skill in the bosses and I do think they're trying to account for what I just said by adding some like dexterity checks uh against the bosses with how you dodge their attacks and things like that. But for the most part, you're just Firing balls, killing things, leveling up, and eventually you've leveled up enough to where you can go on to the next level.

And I found it very satisfying from a again just like number go up dopamine sort of thing. But there's a lot where you're just I'm just doing loop. Of of this exact same level, and I'm just bouncing my little guys in my little farm. Looping. Yeah. Yeah. To where I did start to feel like This doesn't respect my time and I truly even though I've put You know,

You can love something and have it be a waste of time. Like a hundred That's what's happening right here. And each of our souls has enough room for it. There are games that we've done for the show that we call the roguelike exception. That every time I sat down to play, I've thought like this is this is respecting my time. I'm choosing to play it over and over and over and over. But like everything, every sit-down feels like a a a

Like a non-wasted time, you know. This one I definitely like, man, I I just gotta. Do three more runs just to get enough bounces and get enough wood to build the thing, to upgrade the thing, to be able to get to the thing, you know? And like at the end of the day, great.

I'm having a good time. I'm not gonna lie. But like it was a little more grindy, uh, to get like far into the game than I think I would have initially liked. Um But again, I d this is a criticism from the lens of the show that we have put on.

I don't think the game has ever tried to say it was anything other than exactly what it is. And you know what you're signing up. I mean there's there's some value to be had, I think, in comparing your time that you spent with this game, which Do you have an estimate of how much time you spend?

Like compare it to something that you played recently that's a very finely crafted experience, such as uh um the Hollow Knight sequel. Right. Right. Like like take Take a six hour slice of ball pit and then a six hour slice of that and and see like how how do you rank those two experiences or how do they compare? Yeah. Well, but also like I even comparing it to other like Hades is one that I felt was tuned really well. Where I felt like I was

I like me as a player getting better was more important than the stat modifiers I was gaining along the way. So when I did move up, it was it felt more like it's because I I got better. This one, it's like I'm only progressing because numbers gone up enough from me just doing these over and over. I I posit that this is kind of like Th there are T V shows I watch because I am tired and burned out and I'm like

Yes, give me that comfort food. I will watch a bake off. I will watch some like is it going to make me a better person? Am I gaining any skills? Am I doing anything except soothing myself and a and like wrapping myself in a warm blanket? No. And sometimes I need video games where the challenge is I need energy, I need like an external force, I need a thing to like

And I don't like I am currently balancing games with Hollow Knight. Hollow Knight is for the days where I have gotten sleep. And when I haven't gotten sleep, there's games like this. And there are nights where you're just like not up for Like if you've played enough Hades, it's very comforting to a Hades run. But if you are still getting to learn it, it's it's still a challenge, it's still like a growth. You need energy, you need

ambition to get through and I there is a space in my life for uh right it was being Bellatro was that game, right? Like I don't need a ton of brain to play Bellatro. I need some. I don't need a ton of brain to play ball pit. And I think that is but it's gonna give me energy. I'm gonna have a lot of fun playing it. I'm gonna be like, yeah, this slap. Uh I is it respectful? No, but it knows there's like the thing is

A hundred and fifty thousand episodes of Great British Baking Show for a reason. And then there are thousands of levels of this thing for a reason. And it's'cause I'm gonna need it. Yeah.

Yeah, and I I I that's where I think you're both r absolutely right. Like my my criticism is is is not even a critic. I think it's more an observation of my own tastes and what I look for in something like this. Like I wish that there was a little bit more from a uh Like I could beat this game, not just like Aggression. Yeah. Like I I you know, I wish there was some ability to get better and not just I never like beating a boss or I never felt like I'm like, Yeah like

I got it, like got him, you know. And maybe I'm maybe I'm just coming down from Silksong where again it's like hours of pain and then the single most satisfying thing you'll ever feel in a video game. Uh I did pull up my Steam Deck. This cannot be accurate, but I did leave it open. So I would because this is an idle game L.

But this cannot be accurate. It says I spent fifty eight hours on this game, so I don't think that's accurate, but I did leave it open a lot to accrue those things. And I did play a lot of this game over the last uh three weeks or whatever. So

Maybe that's uh I d do you think that game developers are adding those idle game elements to their two games like this in order to kind of game the game on Steam concurrent users? Yeah, I don't know. That I that I mean, uh you know, there's a lot of good conspiracy theories going around right now, uh, Shane, so I guess we can throw that one on the pile. Um I don't know. You guys anything else to uh to think of to talk about with this game? No, but I'm gonna keep playing this one. Like I'm gonna

We it's mainly because a game with this short of a session where every time I unlock something. Yeah. That's just satisfying enough that like I'm gonna find fifteen minute gaming times that I would love to play it. It's uh and so eventually I think I probably will literally put 80 hours into it. uh in little tiny fifteen minute increments on my Steam Deck and then on my Steam Machine and on my Steam frame. I'd probably gift this for Christmas.

My nephew, even though like I probably shouldn't because but it's like not that violent. D you know, I was thinking about the the angle of this. Didn't did you guys ever play Orc? Orcs Must Die, any of those games? Uh yeah, Reagan's really into Orcs Must Die. We played it a couple of times.

They had a new one come out this year that was of unfortunately I I thought not well received uh when it came out. So we didn't end up doing it. We've talked about doing those games for the show before and I was and I was thinking about that game too, where if it's like if you zoomed in a little bit more, I wonder if this game would be fun from that angle. you know, like a way closer. Or if you could do like a three D thing where you are uh like i you know

in the eyes of it and just the hordes are coming at you and just spraying all the stuff at it. That might be Oh yeah. You know, that might be fun. I think um I think hitting the uh the bad guys in the back line if I was seeing them dead on. Maybe you're you're in some sort of tower and lo you know, lording over your uh I don't know. Um All right. Well, I think we we certainly recommend this game. Um so

Uh thank you both for playing it for me. So I guess that's gonna do it for this. I don't thank you for being like for giving me a good time. Yeah. Uh well um if you enjoyed this show and want to chat about it with us, consider joining our Patreon. Uh and uh consider joining our Discord. Our Discord is So come and hang out with us. We were talking about this game and a lot of others. Um the show notes, we're still getting all this stuff figured out.

We take a new format on the But subscribers of the Patreon Episodes, not something new. Look at us. Uh you can you're gonna get the secret tracks. You can join that at patreon.com. You can leave us. Whatever you're doing. And uh we'll be Bye.